


Then I Heard Your Heart Beating

by goldenheadfreckledheart



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 01:26:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7737874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldenheadfreckledheart/pseuds/goldenheadfreckledheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, there are a million really good ways Bellamy could nearly get himself killed. Productive ways, like, dying a radiation soaked death while trying to save his friends from sporadic nuclear meltdown. Or, like, dying a bloody death at the hands of a wild boar on a hunting trip gone wrong. Less grandiose, but still broadly understandable. Really, the possibilities are endless.</p><p>Prompt: Imagine person A of your otp having a brush with death, but coming out alive and well. Imagine person B having awful nightmares about losing them, and in the middle of the night going to person A and resting their head against A’s chest to listen to their heartbeat, just to reassure themselves that person A is still alive.</p><p>Post S3, canon compliant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Then I Heard Your Heart Beating

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this is basically me just turning the “someone treat bellamy blake like he’s worth something” discourse into a fic. It’s also the first canon-verse thing I’ve written in a long while, so be gentle with me. 
> 
> A giveaway fic for [jonsnovw](http://jonsnovw.tumblr.com) on tumblr!

The thing is, there are a million really good ways Bellamy could nearly get himself killed. Productive ways, like, dying a radiation soaked death while trying to save his friends from sporadic nuclear meltdown. Or, like, dying a bloody death at the hands of a wild boar on a hunting trip gone wrong. Less grandiose, but still broadly understandable. Really, the possibilities are endless.

But instead of going out for a _reason_ , he’s staggering his way back to camp, blood dripping down the back of his leg after _getting up too fast_ from the jagged rock where he’d been washing clothes by the river, thereby dragging the length of his calf against the sharp edge, leaving a long, deep gash in its wake.

Between swearing loud enough to alert any nearby adversaries to his presence and internally cursing his stupidity, he does at least foggily remind himself that he needs to stop the bleeding—that if Clarke were here, she’d be ripping the closest fabric into a long strip to tie a tourniquet above the wound.

He pulls one of his own shirts from the pile of fabric, opting to leave the clothing he’d offered to wash for Clarke out of this mess. Trying not to black out from the pain, he uses a strip of it to tie a tight knot just below his knee and the rest to haphazardly cover the gash, in an attempt to absorb the blood.

 _Worse than Roan_ , he thinks sardonically, grasping a nearby tree for support and leverage to push onward. This is worse than an aggressive grounder actually, purposefully _stabbing_ him in the thigh. He trudges back toward camp with the damp clothes—once clean, now splattered with blood—tucked under his arm.

* * *

Luckily, Clarke is the first one to see him nearly fall through the gates, so he doesn’t have to seek her out and let her yell at him for not going straight to medical before she saves his life.

“Bellamy what the hell?” Her eyes dart to the blood spotted clothes in his arms, then down to his leg. “Is that blood? How bad is it?”

“Yeah, your clothes might not be as clean as promised,” he jokes weakly, darkness dancing at the edges of his vision, slowly edging inward. “It might be pretty bad though, yeah,” he says, after a second, lightheadedness growing as he takes a step toward the medical tent and nearly falls.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he hears her say, and seconds later—or maybe it’s longer, he’s not sure—hands larger than Clarke’s come up under his right shoulder, Miller’s maybe, to support his failing leg.

He’s not sure what happens after that, just that he makes it to a cot in the med tent before he finally blacks out.

* * *

He’s out for a day, and when he wakes up, it’s to Clarke, head resting against the mattress at an angle that cannot be comfortable.

“You’re an idiot,” she says, when she notices he’s awake. There’s fear at the edges of her eyes though, and he doesn’t miss it.

“Yeah I’m not going to fight you on that one.” That gets a smile. And when he adds, “Who else can say they’ve been taken out by a stationary rock, though? I’m clearly winning here,” it grows a little wider.

It reminds him of the way they used to work, when things weren’t as heavy, and the world wasn’t constantly crushing inward, daring them to stop it.

* * *

That night, he’s deemed well enough to sleep in his own room as long as he lets Miller help him get there and promises to radio in the morning when he needs to get up and around. Which he agrees to, but not without annoyance—directed toward himself than anything. A fucking _rock_. So many better ways.

The pain isn’t horrible, but it’s enough to keep him from falling asleep right away, and he’s just pulled out a book he borrowed from Monty when there’s a knock at his door.

There’s only so many people it could be, this late. “Yeah?”

The door opens, and Clarke peeks in, hesitant. “Hey, sorry. You awake?”

He gives her a half smile, “Yeah.” He knows there are excuses she could make, to not stay for whatever it is she’s come for. That he’s still recovering and should rest, or that she’s got an early med shift, and half of him is so sure she’s going to make one that it’s a bit of a surprise when she steps inside the room.

“I couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d come and see if you’d mind keeping me company.”

They’ve always been close, but never in a way that necessarily bred casual, honest conversation, and he’s struck by how _sad_ that is, because for all that he’d classify her as his best friend, they haven’t been able to talk like best friends do.

“Yeah, of course not. Come in,” he says, scooting over to make room for her to sit on the bed.

“How’s your leg feeling?”

“Could be worse.”

She settles in next to him, wordlessly, and he gives her a look that he knows she can read. _What’s keeping you from sleeping?_

“You almost died yesterday,” she says with a relenting sigh.

“I know,” he says, and because he can hear the worry in her voice, “I’m sorry.”

She huffs a humorless laugh, “You don’t have to apologize.”

He almost doesn’t respond with the words that come to mind, but it feels like they can turn over a new leaf tonight, so he says, “I don’t like seeing you worried.”

Clarke smiles, slow and warm and a little bit sad. “Must have been hard for you to look at me for the whole time you’ve known me, then.” It’s a joke, albeit a dark one, and he finds her hand, laces his fingers through hers, easy.

“It’s just,” she goes on, a hint of fire in her eyes, “that things like this remind me that surviving on it’s own is struggle enough, never mind that we have to save the entire world and try not to kill or be killed by the people around us.”

He agrees, it’s bullshit. But she knows this, so he just squeezes her hand.

“Sometimes it feels like the entire fucking world is a death trap, and it’s overwhelming to think that, after everything, the people I love could _still_ die any second.”

He knows that she’s thinking about Lexa, knows enough about how she died to know that it was too fast and too soon. Regardless of how he felt about her, he knows this.

But he also knows that she’s talking about _him_ and it’s still a little bit of a shock, to be cited among the people that someone cares most about. He had it for a while, with Octavia, but it was always on and off, hot and cold, and he can’t honestly say he blames her, having to grow up the way she did. They haven’t seen her in a month now, save for flashes of movement caught by whoever’s on guard duty now and then. Like a silent, begrudging, _I’m not dead, don’t come after me._

So he’s still getting used to being…valued isn’t the right word, but things have been rough for everyone, since Pike.

To be fair, this is the closest either of them have come to death since ALIE, and it’s not like he’d be coping any better, if it was Clarke who had limped into camp, pale and dripping blood.

Which—the thought that Clarke worries about _him_ just as much as he does her _shouldn’t_ be a ground breaking thing, but that doesn’t keep it from lingering around the edges of his mind, warm and a little pleasant.

“Hey,” he murmurs, realizing she’s trailed off into silence. “We’re going to be okay someday.”

“I know that, like, objectively,” she replies. “But it’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it is.”

They’re already halfway laying down, backs leaned against the worn scrap of metal that serves as his headboard, and when Clarke yawns, exhaustion clear on her face, she burrows a little further down into his side and he follows suit, so they’re both basically horizontal, and her head ends up halfway on his chest.

It’s not exactly what he intended to happen, and he’s about to move away a little when she pushes closer, so her head is fully against his chest, hair fanning out against his arm.

“Sorry, is this okay?” she asks, muffled against his shirt. “It just… helps a bit, I don’t know.” After a second, she pulls the hand still held in his to touch against his heart before letting their hands settle between them again. "Proof that you’re alive.”

There’s a tightness in his chest, or maybe a release. “Yeah. You’re good.”

It feels a little bit like magic as seconds tick on. The noise of the world dampened around them. Comfortable. Safe. In a world that is neither of those things.

“Hey,” she says, soft, after a beat of silence.

He continues the idle brush of his thumb against her hand. “Hmm?”

“I just—you’re—,” she frowns up at the ceiling, blowing out a huff of breath, “I don’t know if this needs saying, but… you’re important.”

He turns toward her a little on the mattress, quizzical look on his face.

She pushes up on an elbow meets his eyes. “To this camp. To all of us. To…” she says, before flopping back, talking to the ceiling. “To me.”

His mouth goes dry, words swallowed up by emotion. “…I know.”

“Do you though? Because I know after… everything,” _Pike, Octavia, Lincoln_ , the names go unspoken. “God Bellamy, you’ve done so _much_. And I know you didn’t always want to. When I left…” She trails off, and he squeezes her hand. They’ve been through this, traded apologies, but it still stings a little, at the edges. She looks at him a moment longer before settling back down, warm against him.

It strikes him again, how mutual that care is. How he’d say the same things to her in a heartbeat, and yet it’s still… not a surprise, but kind of a _jolt_ when she says them to him.

“We’re team right?” she whispers against his chest, quiet, a moment later. “I know I… I made that impossible for a while, but…”

“We’ve always been a team,” he says, unexpectedly _certain_ about it. “Even when we were bad at communicating.” When she left, when he found refuge with Pike. “Even at the beginning, when we didn’t want to be.”

He can feel her smile against his skin. “Your hair was so bad,” she says.

“We’re having a moment here, Clarke.”

“Sorry,” she says, not sounding it, still muffled against his chest. “You’re right,” comes her voice a second later, softer. “I think I didn’t let myself see that for a while, but you’ve always been…”

“We’ve both made mistakes. But we’ve also both…” he takes a breath, letting himself admit it. “We’ve also both done really good things. Saved our friends.”

“Saved each other.”

He hums his agreements because he can’t quite trust his words. How intertwined they’ve become. It was hard to get to where they are, but also as easy as breathing, and it’s a little terrifying.

“Hey Bellamy,” Clarke says, words catching on a giant yawn. He has to smile.

“Hey Clarke.”

She flicks his chest in response to his teasing echo. “Don’t die, okay?”

“Go to sleep Clarke. I’m alive.”

Her words are sleepy, but probably also stern, if he had to guess. “And you better stay that way.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always around on [tumblr](http://goldenheadfreckledheart.tumblr.com)!


End file.
